Big B Hell, what are you on? You must live in a different country than me!

Big B you are talking about the current Tory Government. Labour under Corbyn offer an entirely different proposition and one this country badly needs: Redistribution of wealth and good old fashioned Keynsian economics. They are the only Party offering something completely different and are fit to Govern. Everyone can remember the Lib Dems coalition with the Cameron Tory Government – they aren’t fit to govern at all after that shambles – especially as they could have made a difference by voting against austerity.

The Labour vote held up remarkably well I thought.

Wilmers31, what you say is true. However, we have, as the opposition in this country, a Leader in Jeremy Corbyn who has a clear vision and focus and yes, a costed Manifesto, on how to end Austerity, the housing shortage, the poverty etc. At the root of these policies is an equal distribution of wealth so the rich will be taxed as they should be not the paltry amount they pay today. The Labour Party currently pose a threat to the establishment because they have a Manifesto that will ring the badly needed changes in this country, will challenge US new world order politics in breaking away from the alleged ‘special relationship’ and other economic policies which would have a serious impact on the status quo – i.e. the establishment. Corbyn has been subjected to the most sustained vicious, malicious, slanderous, poisonous campaign in UK Political History, even though he is a Privy Councillor and the Leader of the Opposition. This campaign by the MSM is in order to smear him to the point that the public do not see him as either a viable PM or a dangerous one. I commend Corbyn for sticking to task and focus, for running a brilliant General Election Campaign back in 2017 amidst this malice and for slashing the Tory’s parliamentary majority. God has given Corbyn the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior. I sincerely hopes he becomes the next Prime Minister of the UK.

I’ll start with your closing comments: I’m not a party-political animal. I thoroughly distrust the system as it stands but do understand that any system that dominates, let’s say, a planetary-ish culture generates a lot of ‘value’ that attracts a lot of ‘bad’ people towards it. It also has massive momentum and power to influence, seeing as we are social animals. It can’t be any other way. Corruption is an ever-present and corrosive reality that does not care about left-right differences.

Hopping back to earlier in your reply: I expect to be treated with whatever it takes to end me as a threat, should I raise my head far enough above the parapet to be a threat. Accusations of child-abuse, anti-semitism, etc., are to be expected. It’s a We See You As A Threat award. Because effective opposition must be annihilated, becoming an effective opposition to the insanity necessarily entails the threat of annihilation. And that is very tough indeed. If we fight, I mean truly fight, we risk death and ruin having ‘accomplished little’. Except for, of course, doing what our hearts tell us is the right thing to do. So if I become cynical – understandably in light of all the things you rightly list – I’d hope one of the 300 folks you mention will correct me on that, or at least try, in the name of doing that right thing.

As for the biosphere, I am not an expert. But, I do know enough to have thoroughly changed the way I live. My veganism is one part of that continuing process. I blogged all my ‘wisdom’ with all the rhetorical skill I could muster for years and discovered that people don’t want change. And that recalcitrance is as natural as anything else. Not to mention the excellently skilful PRopaganda pumped out 24/7. Again, I don’t choose to fight because I know we are going to win. It’s rather that I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I don’t want to not fight. I want to respect myself, love others, evolve, learn courage, become healthy in the deep sense of that word, and so on. Doing this iteratively, paying mindful attention to all perceivable feedback, I learn that the Self-Other dichotomy is fairly false, or sufficiently false for selfishness-altruism itself to start to dissolve as a dichotomy. In other words, it’s not about me, but it is about me as a part of Other. If one is sick, the other suffers.

What I’m looking to do by way of ‘action’ will be along the lines of ‘legal’ culture jamming that leads to abstention: a don’t-feed-the-beast strategy. I’m looking to begin building local community networks that enable meaningful, rich abstention from the madness that is as far from hair-shirt suffering as is humanly possible. And all of it legal. With small numbers initially – and this is extremely important – so as to learn and grow effective as steadily and robustly as possible. I do not want this to do anything like Go Viral as a fad. And, finally, it must all be towards something positive rather than against something negative.

But that does not mean that what you and others do so well by way of critique and information dissemination is superfluous. Far from it. It is equally needed, but not enough on its own. So we need both a mechanism for encouraging people to think twice, to wake up, as well as a kinda-sorta ‘within the system’ ‘alternative’ that has the practical potential to bed down widely while staying under the radar, unnamed, with no -ism attached to it, no leaders to speak of, operating a thoroughly honest, transparent, open but intelligently skeptical filtering process when it comes to effecting (little, local, practical) ideas and monitoring their effectiveness.

It’s early stages in my head and for others with whom I have been tentatively discussing the project. It has to start small, be self-funding, and rooted in a mature understanding of what it’s going to take, in each of us personally, and as a monumentally difficult task culturally. As for how much time we have, I can’t control that, and no one knows for certain. Again, all we can do is what we can do.

Jeremy Bernard Corbyn ‘What Was Done’ *HQ Official*

Wobbly: I’m into my fourth week of a bronchitis, that is the worst I have had in my life. And that is not melodrama! So, I totally agree …but I am not quite feeling it at the moment.

The events of this week have been a cold, hard, reality check. I’m sure you are up to speed on the XR ‘exponential’ rebellion, etc. Hope and optimism were collectively rekindled this week …at last, we are doing something about the climate. Not enough, some say …but at least we are doing something. There has been little but blanket endorsement …finally, we get some action. How many people have said, as I do, if we follow this course of action …we ruin our chances of survival? As a percentage of populations – not even close to a single percentile.

Not only that, perhaps the most vocal and focus of a small group of dissenters, is Cory Morningstar. Who was attacked as a child abuser …or at least that was the very strong suggestion. And Greta Thunberg’s Aspergers has been weaponised as a defence mechanism for perhaps an extinction level threat from neoliberalism. You mention cynicism, how do we counter such cynical dark forces …when dissent is child abuse? These are the harsh realities of the current world situation.

Grant me at least that I am ahead of the curve on this. I have read much of the proposals, which will become either Tory or Labour policy. That will inspire widespread relief and optimism from the bourgeois liberal ‘free-trade-organic’ conscience. And best of all, we don’t have to do anything (eat less meat and cycle more – which the illiberal climate bourgeoisie already embrace). We can drive, fly and have all the ersatz-prosperity we want. Everyone will have green jobs. Whole new world leading industries will be created. The climate will be saved. Whales won’t have to eat plastic. And the economy will boom …hurrah!

The business community and the banks are cock-a-hoop. Drax and the nuclear industry love it (not least because Drax will continue to get £2mn – thats £2mn – a day …a day! …to continue to clearfell the planet and rape biodiversity …and they want to convert two more power stations – that’s £6mn a day in hidden subsidies …plus what they get for the development of CCS. That’s right: a major pillar of the proposals is not even developed yet. There is a reason for that – the hidden cost).

I do not know how deep your environmental knowledge base is. You probably know that a Hydrogen economy is not a primary energy source. You need a primary energy source to make the hydrogen (syngas or electrolysis). The infrastructure is capital intensive, and the energy lost in creating hydrogen is not available for other purposes (using natural gas to make hydrogen is a waste of natural gas). Which is exacerbated by us not having any real reserves of gas. So we have to make the gas to make the hydrogen – which is a massive energy sink (all conversions are entropic). This, after offshore wind, is the major pilar of the CCC. Science fiction.

So, not the end. Brexit is not the end. EU Military Unification is not the end. A Labour or Tory government is not the end. The CCC is not the end. The climate emergency, XR Rebellion, and Climate Strikers are not the end. The champagne bourgeois socialist hopium is not the end. The implementation of a science fiction hydrogen economy is not the end …but it is all adding up to something that is starting to look very much like the endgame: if not the end.

As already pointed out, the end will be deferred and displaced to circa 2035. That is when the energy policies not yet made will mature. That, my friend, may well precipitate the end – when there is no time to alter course (as stated: the early part of the CCC proposals will increase carbonisation – to be offset by negative emissions and a 95% rate of CCS capture – both techno-hopium for the moment – from 2035-50). If that plan fails – and we will not know until too late – we will be in a serious predicament …if not the end.

I totally agree with your list: but I have just sketched the techno-theological imaginal that will keep the majoritarian dream-desire production alive …for at least another 15 years. And those, like you and I, Crank, and a few others …are pretty scant on the ground. And it is now we need to act: if only as an alternative source of information. If we managed an anti-capitalist, anti-statist, anti-neoliberal, anti-pseudo-progress, anti-imperialist, anti-nuclear, anti-war occupation of central London …do you think we would be on the Ten O’clock news, invited into Parliament, be accommodated by the Met, have our tactics endorsed by the media, and have our demands enacted by MPs …after a couple of weeks of protest?

Or do you think we will be labelled child abusers, be pepper sprayed, and have our skulls caved in with batons and CS gas? You know the answer. That, taking stock this week, is where we stand. You, me, and the ‘300’ …a small but significant number who can see through the cynicism to the peaceful world, the one we know in our hearts is possible. The world that would destroy any last cynicism with its beauty. A world that is here today. But one that too few see through their displaced dream-desires of a techno-theological science fiction imaginary.

Perhaps, on reflection, the cynicism is not mine at all …it just rubbed off on me due to the magnitude of dark forces, dark money, and dark tactics, aligned against the future. You may disagree, but Labour is definitely on the dark side for me. And they have no intention of coming back …the serve the neoliberal Mammon. Some call this democracy, I call it the beginning of the end.

It is going to take an awful lot of light to illuminate our future now. I do believe it is possible. It’s just that I’m not feeling it right now.

I think the True Publica piece hit the spot:

As for Labour, the political editor of TalkRadio quite rightly points out that – “Jeremy Corbyn is set to have lost more than 400 Labour councillors in four years. That may make him the worst performing leader of the opposition at local elections for 40 years.” Anyone who thinks Labour didn’t so do bad – wake up.
https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/local-elections-msm-nonsense-and-the-real-message-for-politicians/